Category: Audio

Latvian electro-pop band Instrumenti is known for their eccentric stage presence—the duo first turned heads forwearing oversized panda heads while performing at SXSW in 2010. Now Shipsi and Reynsi, the talents behind this outfit, are taking us behind the scenes to show they can be equally offbeat and experimental offstage.

While visually imagining their album TRU, which dropped last month, Instrumenti worked with design houseAsketic to hatch a concept that would let their music speak for itself. Watch the video above to see the team pour paint onto speakers blasting their tracks. As the membranes pulsated, the paint splashed upward, and Instrumenti caught the patterns on paper to create the lo-fi sound visualizations that would comprise their album artwork.

Much like James Powderly and the Graffiti Research Lab‘s LED throwies and electronic laser vandalism, Soundfiti’s idea of “Sound Tossing” works on a similar principle. Described as “an alternative type of electronic street art” and a resistance movement for activists, artists and all around rabble-rousers, its intent is to draw attention to the concept of acoustic overstimulation and raise awareness about our natural acoustic environment. (For a project that analyzes the different sound environments around North America, click here.)

Soundfiti’s prototype, Urban Cricket, is a solar powered audio device that releases cricket sounds. It’s made from free-formed circuitry, meaning all the components are soldered together instead of using a circuit board. The brighter the light, the louder chirps you’ll hear. It requires a lot of soldering, but Soundfiti says this project can be constructed in only one hour.

Benjamin Gaulon, aka Recyclism, gives us Sonic Graffiti—a playful critique of the city’s sensory assault. Using the light off video screens strewn about the city streets, Gaulon transforms the light input into sound, attacking passers-by with a high pitched squeal that can’t help but turn heads. Its dissonance makes it more difficult to tune out, forcing people to pay more attention to their surroundings as they walk down the sidewalk. Since it feeds off the light of video screens and advertisements, its perpetual wail also serves to accentuate how intrusive and omnipresent ads can be in our everyday lives, even when we aren’t paying direct attention to them.

When the Sony Walkman burst onto the scene decades ago, personal, portable tunes became viable for the first time.

Audio-Technica, a well-known producer of quality, vinyl-centric hi-fi gear, responded to the shift in our listening habits with the AT-727 “Sound Burger,” a strange-looking, pint-sized, battery-powered turntable that made the vinyl experience portable. It was small enough that you could take your records to the late-night party at the Moontower. Needless to say, it didn’t catch on.

Now, in the age of iPods, MP3s, and digital, well, everything, Audio-Technica has taken another swing at making vinyl portable. This one’s a solution much more suited for the 21st century — a USB record player.

The Audio-Technica AT-LP240-USB direct-drive turntable bridges the analog/digital gap by plugging directly into your computer via USB. Using the included free audio editing software Audacity, you can encode all those vinyl tunes to MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV or AIFF audio files. If you’ve amassed a sizable record collection, you gain the luxury of enjoying those wax-ensconced sounds not just when you’re lounging in front of your Bang & Olufsen speakers, but anywhere.

If someone asked you: what does your city sound like? Your answer would probably tend towards the noises you hear each day as you walk around—the bustling of traffic, the chatter of crowds, the hum of activity that makes up any urban setting. We doubt the first thing to come to mind would be actualizing the musical score implicit in your city’s skyline, but that’s exactly what Dutch artist Akko Goldenbeld did with the city of Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Visual artist Quayola recently released Partitura 001, a real-time generative sound visualization made in collaboration with visual music artists Abstract Birds, the first work in an ongoing series. Quayola’s work can typically be split into two types: audiovisual installations that deconstruct classic architecture and paintings, exploring the ambiguity of realism in digital art, or audiovisual performances. Both look at the relationship between music and sound, with the latter more geared towards exploring sound as abstract visuals.

This newest work, created using programming tool VVVV, falls under the latter category and is a continuation of Quayola’s previous experiments inspired by the writings of painter Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky’s abstract paintings, especially his Composition series, looked at ways geometric shapes and color could represent the oscillating waveforms of sound. He said he could hear chords and tones when he painted, which in turn informed his works, and popularized the concept of synesthesia, which looks at how certain stimulations can cause one sensory experience to be represented as another, like seeing music as colors.

Shoulder mounted mics help US soldiers detect snipers quickly. Thousands more of these devices are headed to Afghanistan.

Small lightweight microphones are saving the lives of US soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shoulder Worn Acoustic Targeting Systems (SWATS), developed by defense company QinetiQ, use shockwave and muzzle blast noise to locate enemy gunfire . A single shot is all it takes to give the soldier the bearing and distance to the sniper trying to take his life. A tactical display or audio alert from the device tells the soldier where to look so they can return fire or take cover. With SWATS, you go from sitting duck to well-informed angry defender in less than a second. QinetiQ recently announced that the US Army had ordered 13,500 SWATS units, with the option to pick up 30,000 more. The Marine Corps placed an order for 900. According to the MC Times, these branches already have roughly 4000 and 150 of the units in the field, respectively. Watch SWATS in action with real gunfire in the videos below. Sensors like these are just some of the many devices that are augmenting human soldiers for modern warfare.

Yamaha on Friday announced a new high-end audio system, the $999.95 YSP-2200 Digital Sound Projector. The YSP-2200 is an all-in-one soundbar, packing 16 speaker beam drivers into a single 3.5-inch, height-adjustable enclosure that can be placed below anHDTV. To round out the low end of the system, it comes with a separate bass-reflex subwoofer.

The YSP-2200 simulates 7.1-channel surround sound with Yamaha’s YSP technology, a method for bouncing sounds from a soundbar off of flat surfaces, using the reflected sound to make it seem like audio sources surround the listener.

Note: This text was previously released on the Huffington Post on August 31, 2012. A week before the NFl began their official season.

The NFL prepares for its upcoming season, and during exhibition games on television, as wide receivers go deep for spectacular catches, I cannot help but be reminded of exciting moments from the London Olympic Games, particularly in track & field — when Usain Bolt ran to take three gold medals in the the 100 m, 200 m and 4×100 m relay.

Coincidentally, there has been speculation that Bolt may transition to professional sports such as football in the NFL, although he may prefer soccer. The main reason behind his potential future in either sport is not because he is a good ball handler, in fact, the ball is hardly mentioned. What matters is that Bolt is fast.

Note: This entry was updated on August 19, 2012 with an extra commentary at the end of the main text.

As an educator in higher education and researcher specializing in remix culture and authorship, when I first learned about Zakaria’s admission to plagiarism, I was very disappointed in him, and thought that there was no way around it, that his admission of plagiarizing parts of Jill Lepore‘s work on gun control written for the New Yorker puts into question his intellectual integrity.

I thought that his apology was quick and to the point, but that somehow it was not enough. I thought that it was necessary for Zakaria to come forward and explain in as much detail as possible the reasoning for his behavior. And I thought that I wasn’t alone in hoping for this to happen–that if an actual explanation was delivered, it would all serve the constructive purpose of discussing the seriousness of plagiarism with students while providing a concrete example of a public intellectual who committed such an unacceptable act.

Note: This text appeared previously on Huffington post. Since its original publication on August 8, 2012, NBC decided to at least make available live streaming of the closing ceremonies. Other than this, much of what is observed in the following commentary remains relevant.

Viewers well versed in media expect delivery-on-demand for major events. This has created a peculiar tension when viewing prime-time Olympic coverage consisting of competitions that previously took place throughout the day, but which were not broadcasted live on TV. After the first week of events, it appears that audiences are tuning-in to NBC’s evening broadcast in larger numbers than previous Olympics, and this has become the network’s main justification for holding out on selected events until prime-time.

Social media spoilers are inevitable when the broadcasting network decides to block-out selected events and save them for primetime. This became evident to me as I experienced the Olympics during the first three days.

It began on Friday when I settled to watch the opening ceremony. At this time I briefly considered the fact that the broadcast was not live on the East Coast of the United States, where I live. I also realized that people on the West Coast would see the opening extravaganza three hours after me.

I said to myself that it did not matter because viewing a delayed broadcast of an opening event, sure to be considered historic, would not change my viewing experience. Such a situation is equivalent to one’s willingness to watch a television series knowing that it is a recorded production.

Things were different when I selectively viewed the first events on Saturday live on Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, and NBC Sports. The multiple broadcasts were also complemented with apps for mobile media, well supported with the nbcolympics.com website.

Throughout the day I checked twitter and Facebook for updates and comments. I soon learned that Michael Phelps took fourth place in the Men’s 400m Individual Medley, while Ryan Lochte took first, winning the gold. However, I was not able to experience the historic moment until primetime on NBC. At this point I was more interested in knowing how it happened, and was no longer invested in the event as I would have, had it been live.

The same thing happened again on Sunday when Lochte and Phelps participated in the men’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay only to come second to France. Again, I learned about this in the late afternoon, but I waited to view it during primetime on NBC.

The decision by NBC to select certain events, from earlier in the day, and broadcast them during primetime began to be discussed as soon as Saturday, and by Sunday, stories were written on different online publications. Entertainment Weekly, in particular, ran two extensive stories. NBC apparently made its decision in order to attain higher ratings during its primetime broadcast. Understandably some people are quite unhappy about NBC’s decision, which is why, as I write this, the hash tag #nbcfail is still going strong with rants.

After viewing the events on Sunday night, however, I don’t think that the problem for NBC is that selected events are shown well after they take place. The problem, in my view, is that NBC appears to be selecting the wrong events for delayed broadcast at night.

To be specific, both on Saturday and Sunday during primetime, NBC went back and forth between gymnastics and swimming. When swimming came on, I could not help but think that I was about to see something which had already taken place. But with gymnastics, I did not mind the delayed broadcast at all. Why, I thought? I came to the conclusion that it has to do with the type of sport.

Swimming is an action sport, which deals with extreme physical performance dependent on time. It is defined by exciting moments such as when your favorite athlete does not even take third place. Add to this the possibility of breaking a world record, and you are sure to have a nail-biting experience as a viewer. Such thrill is unlikely to happen with a delayed broadcast of a major swimming competition such as Lochte’s and Phelps’ once it has been spoiled earlier in the day due to social media and online news sources.

Gymnastics, on the other hand, is a sport about physical strength, precision and gracefulness. Add to this the fact that it depends on points given by judges who, in large part, rely on aesthetics, and we have a dynamic that is closer to viewing a theatrical performance, and not so different from viewing the opening ceremony. Gymnastics is one of my favorite categories in the Olympics, and I don’t think I have ever experienced them live.

NBC’s situation actually makes apparent the fact that major networks need to better understand how to create a worthwhile experience for viewers who are likely to know already much about sporting events that took place early in the day (in this case the Olympics) which they decide to deliver during primetime.

If a network decides to hold out on a sport defined by its physical excitement, such as swimming, then an effort should be made in creating a viewing experience about how and why something happened and not “what will happen.” This approach would then make the juxtaposition of swimming and gymnastics a better fit given their differences as I explained. With this more realistic approach Bob Costas will not have to say “no spoilers” as he introduces the taped segment of Lochte winning gold while Phelps takes none, hoping that the viewers will have a thrilling experience. I did not.

The RE/Mixed Media Festival, now in it’s 3rd year, is an annual celebration of collaborative art-making and creative appropriation. It’s the artists’ contribution to the ongoing conversation about remixing, mashups, copyright law, fair use, and the freedom of artists to access their culture in order to add to and build upon it.

The festival – which this year will take place at the Brooklyn Lyceum – a 3-floor 10,000 sq. ft. venue on the border of the Park Slope and Gowanus neighborhoods of Brooklyn – will feature performances, panel discussions, live musical collaborations, hip-hop, sampling, film & video, DIY, food and drink, DJs, technology, interactive installations, painting, sculpture, software, hacking, and much more!

Note: Previously this entry read “book print.” This was a mistake on my part. It should be “book sprint.”

I recently read the “book print” New Aesthetic, New Anxieties by a group of media researchers, theorists and curators, who got together for three and a half days from June 17–21, 2012, at V2, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

The concept of coming together for just a few days to brainstorm a book is certainly something worth considering as an act of creative critical practice. The book from this standpoint functions surprisingly well, especially because its premise is delivered to match the speed of change that its subject (The New Aesthetic) experiences in the daily flow of information throughout the global network. I personally find amazing that a book of this sort can be put together with some cohesion.

Digging through my archives, I found the list of my early updates on Facebook. When I joined Facebook back in 2008, personal updates read “What are you doing?” prompted with “Your Name is … ” I liked the idea behind positioning the Facebook user in a constant state of action. It was like a performance online. Because of this set up, I found myself always thinking of what I was actually doing at the moment that I entered Facebook, and thought of creative ways to approach the apparent triviality of the updates.

We are currently conducting a survey for a Remix Studies book project and we would really appreciate your help. The survey is quick and easy and should take no more than a few minutes of your time. Your assistance will be invaluable in the development of the book, which we hope will be of great use to students, teachers, researchers and practitioners of remix alike.

If possible, we would also be very grateful if you could help us to distribute the survey to anyone within your networks who has an interest in remix.

Kim Jung Il is dead. Sadam and Kadafi have been overthrown and executed. The model of the old-school dictator seems to be dying. Unfortunately, there’s a new dictator in town. Well, not really new, but its presence has never been more prevalent or obvious. This dictator is not just one person or regime. The neo-dictator is comprised of countless organizations, with its power being shifted and redistributed per agenda, so this dictator can’t ever really be killed off. Like any good tyrant, the neo-dictator is motivated by lust for money and power (the quench for which can never be sated). Naturally the neo-dictator’s most powerful tool is the law, laws like SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), which are designed so content providers and their bed fellows could hold onto their outdated and dying business models. Perhaps it’s just a tactic to slow down technological advancement while they catch up.

Erik Kessels’ installation shows what 24 hours of photos on Flickr looks like in physical form. The installation got me thinking about the exorbitant amount of pictures we take today. I’ve never been a big picture taker, that was until I got a digital camera. I have a little over a hundred physical pictures I’ve collected over my lifetime, but I have thousands in digital form, most of which I accumulated in a span of 3-4 years, starting about 7 years ago. My physical pictures I view once in a while, with a definite level of fondness, sometimes wishing I had taken more pictures. I took those pictures to commemorate specific events: nieces’ birthdays, the first time I went camping with my nieces, my last weekend in San Antonio before I moved back to LA, my college graduation, nieces’ high school graduations, dad’s 60th birthday, the last party I attended in Boston before I moved back to LA, pictures from my cross-country trips, when the family dog was just a puppy, and so on. Most of my digital pictures, however, are rather insignificant.